Tag: virginia woolf

from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse

How could one express in words these emotions of the body? express that emptiness there? (She was looking at the drawing-room steps; they looked extraordinarily empty.) It was one’s body feeling, not one’s mind. The physical sensations that went with the bare look of the steps had become suddenly extremely unpleasant. To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain [ … ] Oh, Mrs. Ramsay! she called out silently, to that essence which sat by the boat, that abstract one made of her, that woman in grey, as if to abuse her for having gone, and then having gone, come back again. [ … ] Suddenly, the empty drawing-room steps, the frill of the chair inside, the puppy tumbling on the terrace, the whole wave and whisper of the garden became like curves and arabesques flourishing round a center of complete emptiness. 

Angel was Dead: what then remained? You may say that what remained was a simple and common object – a young woman in a bedroom with an inkpot. In other words, now that she had rid herself of falsehood, that young woman had only to be herself. Ah but what was herself? I mean, what is a woman? I assure you, I do not know…These were two of the adventures of my professional life. The first – killing the Angel in the House – I think I solved. She died. But the second, telling the truth about my experiences as a body, I do not think I solved. I doubt that any woman has solved it yet.

Virginia Woolf, “Professions for Women”

mark hussey on virginia woolf

The draft—as is usual in Woolf’s work—is more explicit about the dream state: a note written as a reminder of what has still to be composed reads:

Another plan for the section reads:

The status of draft material should not be taken for granted in reading a published text; however, it is of particular help in reading The Waves as revisions are nearly always contractions or deletions. One further plan reads: 

William Wordsworth, Wallace Stevens, Virginia Woolf in The Waves, Alice Oswald, Jean Dubuffet in his “Anticultural Position” speech, Simone Weil in Gravity and Grace